Not content with ruining the Fourth of July weekends of dozens of cable-news personalities and producers, Sarah Palin followed up by dragging poor Andrea Mitchell and a bunch of other saps to some godforsaken fishing hole in Alaska last night.

On almost no notice, Palin convened a late-night press availability in a remote fishing village in western Alaska for NBC News, CNN, ABC News, and Fox News in order to further obfuscate her already thoroughly inscrutable rationale(s?) for quitting her shitty job as governor of some crap state that's not even connected to the real America.

The interviews were a postmodern clusterfuck of epic proportions—a governor and her family on a desolate beach in the Alaskan wilderness, wearing waders and a lapel mic, surrounded by camera crews and sleep-deprived network news personalities. ABC News' Kate Snow got in Mitchell's shot at one point. Even though the sun was shining, it was really 10 p.m. in Alaska, because time doesn't work there the way it does in the real world. The gambit guaranteed that between the travel and time spent editing and doing live shots for the morning shows, the reporters didn't get any sleep last night.

Palin is shaping up to be something like The Joker of the political-media complex: Turning up at unexpected times with bizarre stunts designed to make everyone extremely uncomfortable, and then cackling a lot and speaking in riddles. It seems clear that last night's interview was just a dry run to see if she could get folks to fall for a trap—next time it's a hostage crisis.

So what did we learn this time around?

"One term was enough." Too much, Sarah. One term was too much.

"[Fishing] teaches the kids not to be divas." That one was offered without prompting. She's like an 8-year-old who thinks she can trick her parents into buying her a pony or something.

People who don't understand why she quit "might not be fully aware of all the conditions" of her job. Like how hard it is.

"You know why they're confused? I guess they can't take something nowadays at face value." Sarah Palin's "career" thus far represents the triumph of convincing people to take things at face value. It's the only value she has.

"Most public officials, they get to look into a camera and they say, you know, 'You better leave your hands off my kids!' And I haven't been able to say that." Because David Letterman is still statutory-raping your daughter, Sarah, as we speak.

"The fish slime and the dirt under the fingernails—the stuff that is me." Well put!